LOL. It is a day of the week ending in "Y" so it is time to shit on video games for taking eyeballs off the old media people.

A huge proportion of young men are simply dropping out of the workforce and becoming PlayStation’s willing slaves. The numbers are in a National Bureau of Economic Research study and in an essay by economist Erik Hurst of the Booth School of Economics at the University of Chicago.

Dad and Grandpa sent toe jobs overseas to boost their stock portfolio and the jobs don't exist any more. Tell some guy who has been looking for a job that does not involve "would you like fries with that" or Walmart that he is a useless sack of shit for playing video games. Go on, do it and please tell us the response.

Me being who I am, now we play the game of "Who the fuck does this guy think he is?" and I start digging. Guy has a web page that is kinda generic. He did graduate summa cum laude from Yale, so rich kid. And he writes for the National Review which makes him a TradCon. Of Course. So here we have a silver spoon kid who grew up privileged telling people with no jobs how dare they not live the life I have.

Why are we losing a whole generation of young men to video games? Because they occupy a sphere devoid of accomplishment. Why do they occupy a sphere devoid of accomplishment? Because the remuneration and achievement of entry-level employment has been value-engineered away. Why has the remuneration and achievement of entry-level employment been value-engineered away? Because shareholder value has replaced economic and social stability as the dominant goal of stakeholders. Why has shareholder value replaced economic and social stability as the dominant goal of stakeholders?

Because your parents fought WWII and then gave you everything so you never had to work for it, you selfish fucks, which means you don't understand what you're taking from everyone else.

Got picked up by a Lyft the other day. Infiniti Q50, dealer sticker still on. Young, attractive, distracted 20-year-old girl driving it. Now, it's possible that she staked that thing on her own and is entrepreneurealing her way up the ladder to... exactly where she is now. But it's also possible that Daddy helped her with a loan so she could get on her feet and earn a little nest-egg while she spends 2 years living at home sending out resumes waiting for an entry-level unpaid internship in whatever her degree is in.

When I was a kid, I substituted on a paper route. It was good for $20-$30 a day. But I haven't seen kids delivering newspapers in 20 years. For one thing, nobody reads newspapers. For another, there are grown-ass men who need that money.

If there's a long line of grown-ass men competing for a job that got handed to me when I was 11, I'm not going to begin to throw shade at a dude who plays Modern Warfare while he hopelessly throws resumes down the nowhere hole. Especially since he's competing against my girl in Daddy's Brand New Q50.

I'm not even going to bother providing specific quotes. "Games are awful, and young men are getting absorbed by them instead of being productive members of society" is the tone the article takes while exploring nothing. It's not journalism: it's a "look at my superiority complex" contest.

Funny thing, though: the embedded article - "Why more young men aren't working - video games" - uses the photo of a guy playing pre-2016 Dota 2 that's on the monitor, blurred. I'm gonna pull a Devac and tell you that because, even in the thumbnail, I can clearly recognize the death info screen with one of the game's heroes', Slark's, face plastered all over it. Plus all the small things: the old HUD, for example. But also he's not even playing it: it's a Twitch stream of a guy playing Sniper or something while the ads and the donation count run alongside the interface.

Anyway. "Video games are the plague of this generation" is a sentiment people too old to understand or engage in it espouse when they can't be bothered to produce any meaningful thought on the subject. George Carlin during his last HBO special (after his 70th birthday, might I add) said that people can be old when they're thirty, blabbering and complaining about things as a way to justify their miserable existence.

There are things wrong with video games as an industry currently - but providing escapism and Internet-level international communication are not some of them.

I'm just going to add NYPost to the list of "newspapers" to ignore. Thanks for letting me know.

I'm gonna pull a Devac and tell you that because, even in the thumbnail, I can clearly recognize the death info screen with one of the game's heroes', Slark's, face plastered all over it. Plus all the small things: the old HUD, for example. But also he's not even playing it: it's a Twitch stream of a guy playing Sniper or something while the ads and the donation count run alongside the interface.

I don't understand most of what you said, have no idea if I should bother to check it and feel like I should be at least slightly offended.

I saw this posted the other night, last night? This morning? Shit, I dunno, this weekend has been a blur, but I've been rolling things around in my head a bit since I've read this.

I read an opinion piece the other day, I think The Guardian, that threw out the statistic that if you were born in America in the '50s, you had a 90% chance to exceed your parents' income. If you were born in the '80s, that dropped to 50%. I can only assume it's been dropping since. Just throwing that out there, though I don't know how accurate it is.

I've been pretty bitter the past few years. House hunting and job hunting simultaneously and coming up with nasty disappointment on both fronts does a lot to color my perception. It's not about the money. It never has been. It's about respect. All I want is a job where when people ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them, their eyes light up and say "Wow. That's an interesting job," and then follow up with questions out of genuine interest and not some awkward feeling of social obligation to propel a conversation forward. I don't want a big house, or a fancy house. I just want a solid house. Hell, I'd be willing to give up over half the stuff I own to live in a small house, just as long as I have a house. There's something about owning your own place, not living with others, not paying a landlord, that says "You see this guy? He has his shit together and he made it." I got neither. It makes me feel like a bum and a failure as a husband sometimes, though I know Dala doesn't hold it against me.

People talk about movements on here and other places on the internet all the time. Tiny houses. Sharing economies. Community gardens. This that and the other. I sometimes wonder if people are pursuing these things out of an equal sense of desire for simplicity and smallness, acceptance of their fate that they have to do more with less, and an embracing of creativity and entrepreneurship.

This weekend I paid for my gas with the random handful of bills I had in my wallet, not because I'm broke, but because that's what I had on me at the time. It wasn't near enough to fill up my tank. It reminded me of when I was broke and I was kind of nostalgic for it. I hate the fear of being broke and never want to go back to that, but I miss being forced to be simple. I have too many books and antiques and stuff. I'm constantly getting rid of it. I'm constantly getting more. I'm constantly getting frustrated with myself about it. I don't know how to break the cycle and I've been trying for years.

Sometimes I wonder if being forced to do more with less will eventually be good for America. I think we have too much. A few months back, I drove through the part of town with the multi-million dollar mansions. They're obscene. I found myself frustrated with the people inside because I don't think they deserve their money, because even if they came by it honestly, they also came by it because they're willing participants in a system that exploits others. Here, there, yesterday, tomorrow. Then they take this money and buy things they don't need instead of using it to try and fix the world. It seems so unjust. Then I look at myself, with my nice car, my nice food, my overwhelming collection of stuff, and I think, to someone else somewhere else, they'd look at me and think I'm being just as obscene.

The thoughts in that last paragraph have been on my mind for months now. I've just been trying to figure out how to share them without sounding like a melodramatic child.

So since francopoli posted this, I think about the job. I think about the house. I think about what I want versus what I already have versus what other people want and have or don't have and then I don't know what to think anymore. But I think it might be time to be done complaining, because complaining doesn't fix things for me or for anyone else, it just adds to the frustration and resentment. But if I stop complaining, then I have to start asking questions, and if I start asking questions, I have to start figuring out how to answer them.

That takes introspection. That takes work. That takes commitment. That's big and scary. When I think about those things, then look at people who avoid life's problems through entertainment or drugs, or people who blame others instead of asking themselves questions, I don't know if I can really fault them for it. After all, in a way, isn't that kind of what we all do in our day to day lives? Distract ourselves? Make excuses? Pass the buck . . ?

This comment section is like some kind of Marxist gamer form of redpillism.

I'd do any job before I'd do no job with few exceptions. I wouldn't be a prison guard but I can't think of much else below my threshold of dignity or morality.

Sure the social contract is failing but if you aren't willing to try and hold up your own part (having a job and not being a useless sponge) no good will ever come to you.

Yes it's harder than ever to make a living wage but I have nothing but contempt for a mamma's boy couch slug.

You all can donate your money to the Poor Disadvantaged Gamer Welfare Fund in twenty years when they are homeless and littering our streets, begging for a wifi password to get a phone fix but I'm not going to have much mercy.

This comment section is like some kind of Marxist gamer form of redpillism.
...if you aren't willing to try and hold up your own part (having a job and not being a useless sponge) no good will ever come to you.

"Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish."

Is your coffee shop running successfully? 'cause if so, you don't get to have to worry about having no financial future in front of you - unlike most of the people talked about in the... khm, "article".

You must be working hard to keep the shop going. It must take not just effort and time but conviction that what you're going to do is going to bring profit - monetary, emotional or both. Most of the men in question have no luxury of conviction of their efforts reaping benefits.

Speaking as a man who has as recently as a year ago felt completely powerless over his financial fate, I can understand exactly what many, if not all, of those men going through. You don't sit in front of the screen with a controller in your hand because games are such overwhelming and fulfilling fun. In abscence of the real thing, a simulation would have to do - and this is exactly what's happening to the mentioned players: lacking the real incentive to work on yourself.

Why are they lacking it? Because they were never taught to have it. Their parents have probably supported them all the way, giving them everything they'd want or need. They never had to work for their own benefit - never forced, never needed to and, therefore, never wanted to. You might cite the education system as at least a partial effect on their consciousness' development - not the case when all you have to do to "do good" there is produce correct answers according to the guidelines (still more handling). How on Earth do you expect these kids (and the adults they wound up being) to know that there's more to life than being supported and guided by others?

I want to say "screw you" for comparing the situation to the Red Pill, but you're at least partially right. Both stem from lacking essential education in some of the most basic social and personal notions: respect (for oneself and others, respectively), challenging oneself, communication about one's pains and troubles to the right people.

You're asking a lot from people who don't know that they're even supposed to know it. Hell, I'm still a lazy bum despite profound self-development, and the only reason I went there in the first place because I'm a rebel by nature. I see things around me I don't like, and I fight to make them proper - and most of the time, I still don't have the drive that many advertise to be the key to success. It's growing, but it takes time and effort - but more importantly, a shit-ton of education that I had to gather all on my own, 'cause no one would just give it to me. How could you expect others to have it better?

Enjoy your work ethics. Enjoy the drive and the inner strength it takes to run your life the way you want to. But don't act so damn smug about those who have it less than you. It's not laziness: most of the time, it's learned helplessness - and the best thing you could do is teach someone that things could be better.